


Appeasement

by deathwailart



Category: Original Work
Genre: Beneath the waves, Fantasy, Gen, Gore, Horror, Rituals, Sacrifice, sea creatures - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 20:28:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the drownéd god will be appeased.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appeasement

**.the sacrificed son**  
And so in sacrifice did they drown him to appease cruel Capricornus. They depend on the sea goat for their bounty, this fishing village nestled on a cliff carved by the crash of waves upon its face, the surrounding land consisting of poor, thin soil that sustains neither crop nor beast beyond rangy goats, sheep and cattle with poor stringy flesh and thin milk so they look to the sea. The sea that must be appeased and when the sea gives, it must take with the lives lost upon it mourned little lest it cause offense. Those lives are not enough. They are not offered, merely reclaimed by the rightful owner so there is always a sacrifice. Always a young man to give Capricornus strength and vigour, a firm and strong young man, handsome – not a villain, a rapist or a thief or even a murderer. To send such a thing to the sea would be to insult him. It is considered an honour to be the one who will give his life for such a noble purpose but oh it is never a pleasant thing. Shrouded in secret, never spoken of outside of the conclave who make the decision over who will be given to the waves.  
  
The conclave pronounce the boy having taken a note of every boy born in the village, no longer boys in truth, young men who stand tall between mother and father who clutch at their son with tears in their eyes. There is great joy in being the parents who birth this saviour boy who will be given to the sea and the young man is expected to walk forward without a single glance or hesitation as he mounts the steps where the conclave stand before he falls to his knees before them all. Oh how humble he is, see his eyes shine bright with purpose, his voice choked with emotion. They do not know the terror this young man feels when he is told that his life will be cut short at the high tide the next day, the priests giving their holy words; no one else is allowed to witness such a thing. He is marched back down the steps when he is done by the conclave – long years ago some tried to run and save their skins but they were hunted down, not given to the waves (no one in their right mind would give a _coward_ ) but cut along the belly and tied to the cliff face for the birds to feast on them as they lived, pecking and scraping until only bones remained. A reminder now.  
  
This young man chosen is told to rest and sleep, to think on what he gives – so much more than just his life. Is it not selfish, the priests ask, to want to live yourself when you can fill the bellies of mother and father, brother and sister and all who live here? He says nothing but dreams fitfully of his bloated body bobbing in the waves. He is woken at first light and fed a heavy broth of thick cream, shrimp, crab, mussel, squid, wine and herbs and so many different fish, enough to make him sick but he forces it down and walks after the priests to the sea. The tide is so many miles away. He is bid to strip and so he does. He is bid to lie down and so he does. Thick pegs are buried in the sand, encrusted with barnacles, rope looped about his wrists and then looped about the pegs, same with his legs. The incline of the shore means he can see the tide coming in as gulls wheel high above his head, screaming as if in mockery of him and this ritual, close to drowning out the chants of the priests.  
  
He shivers for long hours until the tide creeps in, touching his toes, icy, enough to provoke a gasp. The priests depart without a word and he is left to watch as the waves lap at him, shivering and then numb until salt stings his mouth. Soon he is retching and sobbing, drowning in the sea and vomit, frantically attempting to raise his head enough to breathe even though he knows he is only prolonging his own again.  
  
When he finally drowns with stinging eyes and burning mouth and nose, it is a blessing.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
This young man is not the only one given to the sea. Tributes are offered up too, young women, brides of the sea; if the sea yields them little more girls are offered as wives, to curry favour of Capricornus and to fill the bellies of all so there might be more sons and daughters for the waves, grown tall and strong. She is carried to him by gentle rivers that lead out to the sea, her death as terrifying as the young man.  
  
This village trades only, there are no stories told by them to outsiders.   
  
The outsiders tell enough for all.  
  


* * *

  
  
**.the tribute daughter**  
She is young (or so her mother screams, her father argues that she is near a woman grown) when she is dragged down to the river before first light, her mother screaming as her father fists a hand in her hair to haul her along to the priests who are waiting with burning torches. It is cold, the grass still covered with dew and when they reach the shore she is numb from the frost but not so numb that she does not feel the gravel and rocks cut her feet. The priests are all old men, older than she has ever seen and when she is close enough to make out details she sees the deep lines of age cut through their faces like scars. In the river there is an old woman, naked despite the fact that it is winter, that it is before dawn. There is no hint of shame as she thrashes wildly, old sagging breasts swinging lewdly. She cackles a laugh that rattles like bones.  
  
Her father pushes her forward and she stumbles, unable to catch herself in time and she falls, her chin snapping up hard enough to make her teeth hurt. Her eyes sting and her palms scrape against the ground. She wants her mother. She risks a glance back at her father who is staring with unseeing eyes, a hank of her hair in his fist. He nods to the priests and turns, leaving her alone. Her dress sticks to her knees when she stands, blood spreading through the fabric and the front is dampened and dirty with silt. She brushes at it, digging tiny sharp rocks deeper into her palms as the priests stare, the old woman thrashing still although she is emerging from the water now. Her eyes dart to between the woman’s legs and the wild thatch of grey hair. Her eyes focus on her feet where a small crab is scuttling, the colour of mud. It brushes her toes and she recoils with the horror of a much younger girl. The woman makes her way forward, a gull cries out above them, the reeds rustle and a kingfisher shoots from a low branch in a rush of blue and silver. She does not see it emerge as she backs away to the village, to the safety of her mother’s arm. Someone holds her from behind and then the woman is upon her, eyes wild, lips blue from the cold, moaning nonsensically in the Old Tongue, the Forbidden Tongue.  
  
The priests chant and she is being dragged and pushed, fighting as hard as she can against old men and a wild woman. She is going to drown today as the coming of dawn paints the sky red. She is going to be held under the water until her lungs burst and she is forced to open her mouth. River water will rush in, ice cold and her lungs will full and then the world will go black and she will be no more. She digs her heels in but the ground is loose so she gains no purchase and then the water touches her toes, then her ankles. She draws breath to scream but instead of making a sound she clamps her mouth shut as she is thrown in, her and the old woman. It is colder than anything she has experience and her first instinct is to curl in on herself until she snaps back to awareness, kicking and thrashing as her lungs burn. The water stings, a thousand tiny knives as stars explode behind her eyes. She makes her way back to the surface and sucks in a shaky gasp of air before fingers seize the back of her neck and she is submerged once more. It’s not nearly enough air and her lungs are beyond bursting, they are on fire and her heart is thumping frantically in her chest until she finally opens her mouth, on her back now, eyes open to see the old woman floating.  
  
She thrashes wildly, clawing at the water until her heart weakens and stops. The sky through the water looks like blood. She sinks like a stone.  
  
  
 **.the drownéd man**  
Deep beneath the waves sink two bodies. Untouched somehow by the things that live in the sea but all falls into the domain of Capricornus, the drownéd god, the sea goat, the names these villagers and sailors give him but that is not his name. His name he cannot remember but he knows he had one. Poor boy, poor boy born on an unlucky day to a superstitious village who looked to anything they could in blame and he was the one they picked on. They blamed him for a multitude of sins, calling him profligate and it was his own father who threw him before the priests, red-faced, bellowing like some great bull, saying they had to do something to rid their village of the pestilence he had helped to unleash upon the world.   
  
The priests were only too happy to take him.  
  
They perfected their ritual over time when he somehow survived and became the very thing they all feared but his sacrifice was a punishment and execution where the whole village assembled to watch, jeering at him, throwing rocks as he was dragged through the streets naked before them, his cheeks burning not with shame but with rage. His father spat on him, his mother refused to look, the girl who would have maybe been his wife threw a rock so sharp it left a long line upon his cheek, the blood running freely which only seemed to incite the crowd more. So hungry for a lynching. He _hated_ them. He wanted to drown them all and let the sharks and fish and crabs eat them as they tried to swim away, for seaweed and eels and octopi to twine themselves about them with the surface just out of reach. Those are the nightmares he gives to them now and the deaths he gives to some sailors, nightmare deaths where he sends his legions after them, the sea goat for what they nailed to his head, two great curling horns from the goats that can no longer survive now that the land grows weaker the stronger the sea becomes.  
  
That is his doing. He does not expect them to notice, blind fools that they are.  
  
Swimming to take the untouched and too young bodies into his arms to breathe new life into them, he still remembers as he always does whenever he finds what has been given to him.  
  
His death was horrendous, designed for the worst of criminals. Bound on the beach with stakes through wrists and ankles. Coarse sand rubbing his body raw as he tried to fight, screaming for them to release him for he had committed no greater sin than being born. The priests had tried to drown him out with all their long sermons in the tongue they had all spoken that they call Forbidden; that language went with him, it was associated with a changing of the ways as they sought prosperity and brighter futures with darker deeds. Crabs were placed upon his face to go after his eyes and he howled and bit down on his tongue so hard that blood flooded his mouth as they did their work. Another soon went for the tongue when he could not close his mouth. The priests cut open his belly and spread it wide for the gulls and whatever else made its way to him drawn by the blood and cries until the sea took him. In doing so, it somehow brought him life. It flooded him and his flesh returned, his tongue returned but his eyes did not, instead filled with some blinding light and he knew then that the sea was his, he was the drownéd man crown in horns with knowledge of all the sea where his eyes once were. He became their myth and legend.  
  
As life is breathed into them, the memories fade.  
  
He takes them into his arms, this sacrificed son and tribute daughter and he embraces them, bids the young woman to lift the scrap of tattered sail he binds around his eyes, the bright light that shines through them and he knows that they see peace, they see vengeance and hope swirling together. The binding is replaced and two hands, one small and soft, one hard and strong touch his face. He leads them deep into his kingdom. The sea grows ever stronger and the drownéd god will one day truly be appeased.


End file.
